Early Report By ABC News Is Criticized

By ELIZABETH KOLBERT

Published: April 14, 1994

Violating a longstanding informal agreement, ABC News broke a news embargo on Tuesday night to report the results of a new cancer study a day early. The network's action was immediately condemned by The New England Journal of Medicine, which published the study, and by journalists at other news organizations.

"I'm beside myself," said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, the editor of The Journal. "It just astonishes me."

A news embargo is essentially a bar imposed by a source on the publishing or broadcasting of information before a prescribed date. Such an embargo is unenforceable, but news organizations usually abide by it under a sort of journalistic honor system. An embargo is often used by organizations that want to get information to reporters early without giving one news organization an advantage over others.

Typically, The New England Journal of Medicine, which appears on Thursdays, sends copies to news organizations several days in advance; the intent is to give reporters time to look into what are often complex scientific articles. But The Journal expects the news outlets not to publish articles or broadcast reports about the content of The Journal until Wednesday night.

In Bethesda, Md., on Tuesday, the National Cancer Institute, which sponsored the study, held a briefing for reporters on the results -- that no evidence had been found that vitamins protected against heart disease or cancer. A report on the study appears in The Journal today. At the briefing, reporters were once again warned that the materials were embargoed until the next evening. 'Public Arena' Reasoning

On Tuesday evening, however, ABC News decided to break the embargo and led its "World News Tonight" broadcast with a report on the study. Some newspapers, including USA Today, seeing that ABC News had broken the embargo, printed articles about the study on Wednesday.

It took ABC News most of the day yesterday to respond to questions about its action. Arnot Walker, a spokesman for "World News Tonight," said the report was broadcast on Tuesday night because the National Cancer Institute briefing had "put the findings into a public arena, and we did not feel the original embargo date would hold on an issue of such importance."

Mr. Walker said the cancer institute had moved up the briefing by one day, and that the ABC News medical correspondent, Dr. Tim Johnson, had felt that this made the embargo untenable.

But a spokeswoman for the cancer institute, Kara Smigel, said the date of the briefing had not been changed.

ABC News's decision to broadcast the report was based on the recommendation of Dr. Johnson, said Mr. Walker, who added that Dr. Johnson was on vacation yesterday and could not be reached for comment.

Dr. Kassirer said that one of his editors had received calls from ABC News on Tuesday saying that the network was concerned that "someone was going to break the embargo." He said this was a "very weak excuse" for ABC News to run the report a day early.

NBC News first reported the results of the study yesterday, on the "Today" show.